Middle East crisis live: Leaks from Netanyahu’s office may have compromised peace deal, Israeli court finds | Israel-Gaza war
Leaks from Netanyahu’s office may have compromised a peace deal, an Israeli court finds
A breakdown in peace negotiations may have been caused by leaked and falsified documents involving a close aide to the prime minister, an Israeli court has said.
The leaking of the documents – to Britain’s Jewish Chronicle and Germany’s tabloid Bild – came at a crucial time for hostage negotiations.
The documents claimed Hamas were going to smuggle Israeli hostages to Egypt, jeopardising any peace arrangement.
Over 100 hostages out of 251 taken by Hamas on 7 October 2023 are still captive and their whereabout remains unclear.
Commentators say the leaks were made to protect Netanyahu who faces a strong possibility criminal charges for allegedly accepting bribes.
Benny Gantz, who until recently was in Netanyahu’s war cabinet, said that if sensitive security information was used for a “political survival campaign”, it would not only be a criminal offence but also “a crime against the nation”.
The leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid, argued that if the prime minister was aware of the leaks, “he is complicit in one of the most serious security offenses” and that if he wasn’t aware, he shouldn’t be in office.
Families of the hostages stated that it is “a moral low that has no depth. This is a fatal injury to the remnants of trust between the government and its citizens”.
Key events
Israel acknowledges attack on alleged Hezbollah intelligence headquarters in Syria.
Israel’s military said its air force struck the intelligence headquarters of Hezbollah’s Syrian branch in a strike on Damascus on Monday, an attack that claimed the lives of two people believed to be Hezbollah members.
Warplanes “conducted an aerial operation and struck Hezbollah terror targets belonging to Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in Syria”, the military said in a statement.
The Syria branch “includes an independent intelligence gathering, coordination, and assessment network”, the military said, adding that the attack aimed to degrade Hezbollah’s intelligence capabilities.
The strikes hit a house “used by members of Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard” at a farm, the The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said.
Syria’s foreign ministry condemned the attack, saying it targeted “civilian areas” south of Damascus.
Syrian state media said the strike occurred at approximately 2:18 pm (British time) and came “from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights”.
Israel has killed at least 16 people and injured 90 others in Lebanon on Monday, according to the Health Ministry’s latest figures.
A ministry statement says fatalities caused by Israeli attacks have risen to 3,002 with 13,492 others injured since October 2023.
Meanwhile Hebollah says it bombed targets in Kidmat Tzvi and the Ayelet Hashahar area in northern Israel.
Julian Borger
Israel is bracing itself for another Iranian attack after a crescendo of threatening rhetoric from leaders in Iran warning that the country would retaliate for an Israeli missile strikes last month.
Iran initially played down the impact of the 26 October Israeli strikes on its military facilities, which were in turn a response to an Iranian ballistic missile attack on Israel at the beginning of October.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gave an initially ambivalent verdict on the Israeli strikes, saying that the attack “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed” while Tehran weighed a response…
Israel yet to provide evidence to UN that Hamas has infiltrated humanitarian group
Juliette Touma, UNRWA director of communications, said UNRWA received one formal accusation directly from Israeli authorities, alleging 100 staff were associated with Palestinian armed groups. Touma said Israel has not responded to their requests for evidence.
Israel told the United Nations it’s cancelling the agreement that regulated its relations with the UN relief organisation for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) because Hamas was operating within the organisation.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said the UN “was presented with countless pieces of evidence that Hamas operatives are employed by UNRWA and about the use of UNRWA facilities for terrorist purposes – yet nothing was done about this”.
The Lebanese health ministry has said that the death toll in Lebanon has crossed 3,000 in the Israel-Hezbollah war, which has been so far going on for 13 months.
Further to our post of 16.02 reporting Israeli strikes in Damascus, AFP has the following:
At least two Hezbollah members were killed on Monday near the Sayyeda Zeinab area south of Damascus, home to an important Shia sanctuary and guarded by pro-Iranian groups, a war monitor said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said the strikes hit a house “used by members of Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard”, in a farm in the Sayyeda Zeinab area.
Israel’s military has intensified its strikes on targets in Syria since it launched its war on Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon more than a month ago.
Two Hezbollah members were killed and several others were wounded, according to the monitor.
Syrian state media also reported the strikes but said they only caused material damage.
Mehdi Mahfouz, 34, who lives nearby, said he “heard three successive explosions, one of which was very strong. Then I saw a large black cloud of smoke rising.”
The blasts were heard in the neighbouring Jaramana suburb of Damascus, according to an AFP photographer, as ambulances headed to the area.
The director of the last partially functioning hospital in north Gaza says he does not understand the purpose behind the bombing.
“At this moment, occupation forces are continuing to violently bombard and destroy Kamal Adwan hospital, targeting all parts of the hospital,” the Gaza health ministry told Reuters
Hospital director Hossam Abu Safieh said in a statement that the situation was “catastrophic” and that “the army did not contact the hospital before directly targeting it.”
“Several of our staff have been injured, and we are unable to leave the hospital,” he said of the facility in the northern city of Beit Lahia.
“We do not understand the purpose behind this bombing that is targeting the hospital.”
Al Jazeera reports that Israel has attacked the Syrian capital of Damascus.
This news comes hours after Israeli special forces captured a man in Syria accused of helping an Iranian network to gather intelligence on targets in Israel, the military said.
“The operation prevented a future attack and led to the exposure of the operational methods of Iranian terror networks located near the Golan Heights. Al-Assi was transferred for further investigation,” the military said in a statement on X
More to follow …
Gaza’s health ministry says it may be making its “last distress call” as the IDF bears down on Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza.
The ministry says that Israeli soldiers “continue to bomb and destroy” the hospital, affecting all its facilities.
“There are many injuries among the medical staff and patients. The medical staff cannot move between the hospital departments and cannot save their injured colleagues,” the ministry says.
William Christou
Fadi was praying on Wednesday afternoon when the ground began to shake. At first he thought it was an earthquake, but then he saw a plume of smoke rising from his house. He rushed home and began to dig. One by one, he pulled family members from the rubble, all eight of them killed in an Israeli airstrike.
“I pulled my brother out of the rubble in pieces. I found his four-year-old daughter’s hand in the branches of an olive tree 20 metres away,” he said. The owner of a gaming cafe in Bednayel, a town on the outskirts of the historic eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek, he asked only to be identified by his first name for fear of being targeted by the Israeli drones that circled overhead.
The day before, Fadi’s brother Ali had asked him if his family could stay at his house since they lived next to a petrol station and he feared it would blow up in the event of an Israeli bombing; a local family had burned to death in an earlier Israeli bombing and Ali did not want his wife and two children to suffer the same fate…
Leaks from Netanyahu’s office may have compromised a peace deal, an Israeli court finds
A breakdown in peace negotiations may have been caused by leaked and falsified documents involving a close aide to the prime minister, an Israeli court has said.
The leaking of the documents – to Britain’s Jewish Chronicle and Germany’s tabloid Bild – came at a crucial time for hostage negotiations.
The documents claimed Hamas were going to smuggle Israeli hostages to Egypt, jeopardising any peace arrangement.
Over 100 hostages out of 251 taken by Hamas on 7 October 2023 are still captive and their whereabout remains unclear.
Commentators say the leaks were made to protect Netanyahu who faces a strong possibility criminal charges for allegedly accepting bribes.
Benny Gantz, who until recently was in Netanyahu’s war cabinet, said that if sensitive security information was used for a “political survival campaign”, it would not only be a criminal offence but also “a crime against the nation”.
The leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid, argued that if the prime minister was aware of the leaks, “he is complicit in one of the most serious security offenses” and that if he wasn’t aware, he shouldn’t be in office.
Families of the hostages stated that it is “a moral low that has no depth. This is a fatal injury to the remnants of trust between the government and its citizens”.
Summary of the day so far …
It is approaching 5pm in Beirut, Tel Aviv and Gaza City. Here are the latest headlines …
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Israel claims to have killed two senior Hezbollah commanders in southern Lebanon in two separate strikes, as it continues its attacks on what it calls terrorist infrastructure. Lebanese authorities have put the death toll from Israeli airstrikes in the country at over 2,800
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Israel’s military has said Hezbollah has fired more than 60 rockets into Israeli-controlled territory during the course of Monday. There were no reports of any casualties
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Ten people have been reported killed by Israeli airstrikes inside Gaza. The Hamas-led health authority there has said that 33 people were killed in the previous 24 hours. It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict
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Palestinian authorities in the Israeli-occupied West Bank have said that a massacre was narrowly avoided after an arson attack attributed to Israeli settlers on a building and about 20 cars in Al-Bireh, near to Ramallah. Witness said ten people poured liquid on the cars to torch them. Israeli security forces say they are investigating the incident
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Israel’s foreign ministry has said in a statement it has formally notified the UN that the country will ban the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, Unrwa, from operating inside Israel within 90 days
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The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that 94,431 children under the age of 10 got a polio vaccine over the weekend, which represents 79% of the target in northern Gaza. At least 90% vaccination of a population is needed to stop the spread of the virus
A Lebanese MP has accused Israel of attempting to turn areas in the south of the country into “burnt out areas where there is no way to live even after the end of the war and attacks.”
The National News Agency quotes MP Ali Khreis speaking after an inspection of areas in the south. He is quoted as saying:
These southern villages and towns are struggling against the Zionist machine. Lebanon expressed and stated … that we want to implement UN Resolution 1701, and we want the Lebanese army to protect the borders and maintain security and stability, and that the presence of Unifil is an international guarantee for implementing the international resolution.
Israel’s military has claimed that it is carrying out “limited, localized, targeted raids based on precise intelligence in thicketed terrain along the border fence in southern Lebanon, where the Hezbollah terrorist organisation has established itself,” but Lebanese authorities have put the death toll from Israeli airstrikes inside the country at over 2,800 dead.
Before and after satellite photographs have shown the extent of destruction wrought by Israeli attacks on a village in the south of Lebanon. Israel has been accused of breaking international humanitarian law by opening fire on Unifil peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon.
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